Saintless

I adore Rachel Maddow, and this is an example of why. But, then I have no intention of participating in public teabagging, either.

To all the teabaggers, I have a few things to say to you.

First, you keep talking about taxes. Except your taxes just got cut. Unless you’re rich, and make over $250K a year, President Obama just gave you a tax cut. I’m guessing there won’t be many people at these “parties” that didn’t get a tax break.

Second, I hate to try to redirect your failed anger, but I think your problem is the spending, rather than the taxes. But, see, your party (or at least the party of most of the teabaggers) is the one behind the problem we’re facing right now. The GOP, with Bush at the helm, drove our country into the ground. When Bush got into office, the Democratic Party (with Clinton at the helm) had managed to give our country a surplus. Bush took that surplus away, and put us back into deficit spending. Obama walked into a huge mess, and he has no choice but to fix it. And now, it seems convenient for Republicans to blame Obama and the Democrats.

But blaming Obama and the Democrats is wrong. Obama is doing what is necessary to fix this mess. It’s not pleasant, but it has to be done. And I don’t think any of you are considering the big picture. You’re in this narrow little alley that says the other party must be wrong, and that’s as much consideration as you’re willing to give it.

And finally: All of you are coming of like a bunch of two year olds throwing a tantrum. If you can quit the partisan whining, maybe we can go back to having a real conversation.

Just a little update: Teablogging.net. ’nuff said.

Tags: Rachel Maddow, teabagging

Newcomer to the United States House of Representatives, Jason Chaffetz, has some balls, all right (emphasis mine):

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, lent tentative support to President Barack Obama’s war policy in Iraq after spending two days in the war-ravaged nation as part of a congressional delegation.

“Thus far he has been pretty good at listening to the generals. I just hope that continues,” Chaffetz said. “My advice to the president is don’t let politics drive the timeline.”

Seriously? Chaffetz (in all of his worldly experience) thinks he’s finally got a chance to advice President Obama about something (yeah, right) and he tells him not to let politics drive him? I mean, because we all know Chaffetz gave a moment’s consideration to anything dealing with the budget that wasn’t politically driven. Uh, huh. Ri-i-i-ight.

Though, maybe this explains why Chaffetz blocked me on Twitter. He was afraid I might be a terr’ist, like all them other lib’rels, and since he was traveling to see the rest of them terr’ists over in Iraq, it was dangerous to keep me on Twitter!

I wonder if Obama laughed him out of the room when he gave that advice, or treated him more like a pesky fly?

Tags: Representative Jason Chaffetz

Apparently, our good Governor Huntsman has invited President Obama to the Western Governor’s Association Meeting in Park City this June.

Who is in for encouraging him to come back to Utah? I’ll be posting details of that plan, soon.

Once we have him confirmed, I’ll be posting details of how to say hi while he’s here. Just don’t expect more than we did the first time he stopped by. If you remember, we were just going to wave as he drove by, and stand around for hours to make sure we got that chance. We were told only 48 hours ahead that he was going to stop, and were only allowed to tell anyone that it was going to happen about 18 hours ahead.

Join us, k?

Surfing through my RSS feeds, I come upon a post from Senator Greg Bell that starts with this:

A college student wrote to ask me for her class assignment what the most pressing issue facing our society. I decided not to speak to moral issues but said the following:

My first thought was “Wow! He’s not going to go with some religious pronouncement that gays are ruining marriage, or that letting children see alcholic drinks poured in restaurants is going to make them grab the nearest bottle and drive over grandma.” Then, I wondered what the subject would be. Being a Utah Republican, it wasn’t likely that he was too worried that bad environmental policies are going to leave our children without a planet upon which to reside. Nor was it likely that he’s too worried that Utah’s one-party rule is bad for our state. Highly doubtful that it had anything to do with Human Rights, or the lack thereof, of any sort. So, what could Sen. Bell think was the most pressing issue for our society?

Although he never mentions Democrats or Obama directly, he infers that the whole economic mess we’re in is their fault. Yep, those Obama Democrats are the “most pressing issue facing society”. Here’s how he starts out:

The most pressing governmental policy issue is the expansion of the federal government into areas I believe are unconstitutional. And whether or not these actions are unconstitutional, the funding for the federal government’s programs and bail-out packages is unsustainable. The government has shouldered staggering debt to finance programs and the bail-outs. The massive expenditure of funds in the bail-out/stimulus packages will, by almost everyone’s admission, cause serious inflation. Moreover, taxes will have to be increased, jobs and company expansions will be curtailed with higher taxes, and more and more people will become dependent on the federal government for income, health care and food.

Apparently, it’s ok for the State of Utah to tread on unconstitutional ground, though. I mean, they just passed a bill with the purpose of funding the legal battles that come from attempting to ban abortions. Um, which is unconstitutional. That’s about the point I started feeling pressure in my head. Then I got to the point where he used the word “unsustainable”. Because I can think of a ton of ways that government practices are unsustainable, and most of them are related to the environment, of Bush’s (and the GOP’s) last 8 years, which got us into this mess to begin with. So, he’s seriously telling this college  kid that GW’s trash heap that Obama’s attempting to clean up is somehow all Obama’s fault. That’s about where my head exploded.

He then takes the opportunity to give himself and the rest of the Utah Senate a nice pat on the back by saying how neighboring states are failing, but Utah is doing the right thing, and businesses like us.

Wait, what was the original question, again? Oh, yeah. “What is the most pressing issue facing our society?” His answer: ‘Those darn Democrats. But Utah politicians are the good guys’. Way to stay on topic, Senator.

Anyone have a better answer?

Tags: economy, Utah Senator Greg Bell

I follow Rep. Jason Chaffetz on Twitter. He sent a link out today to this video with Stephen Colbert:

Amusing, as all Chaffetz-Colbert interaction seems to be. But, the next one has me a bit concerned. Watch him talk about Obama’s budget:

He says that Obama’s budget is “an all time record high”. Except he’s leaving out the fact that Obama isn’t hiding pieces of his budget, as Bush did. He included everything that should have been in there, instead of hiding funding in other bills and pretending they weren’t supposed to be part of the budget.

“It is only by restoring fiscal discipline over the long run that we can produce sustained growth and prosperity. [...] In keeping with my commitment to make our government more open and transparent, this budget is an honest accounting of where we are and where we intend to go. For too long, our budget has not told the whole truth about how precious tax dollars are spent. Large sums have been left off the books, including the true cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

It feels like Chaffetz is not viewing the situation honestly, and is instead giving in to the kneejerk reaction that there’s no room for compromise between Democrats and Republicans. Perhaps he’s trying to make a name for himself, and secure his seat in the years to come. But, if he saw things wrong with the budget, I think he would have been far more effective to try to work with it, and fix the things he saw wrong, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He won’t prevent the budget from being passed, but it’s possible that if he wasn’t so dead set against it, that he might be able to make it better. And that if he didn’t view everything with partisan glasses, he might be an effective Congressman someday.

Tags: Representative Jason Chaffetz

Come back here to watch Obama address Congress at 7 PM MST.

I’ll be Tweeting also, using the hashtag #nSOTU

I’ve had people try to tell me that my outrage over Obama choosing Warren is divisive. That Obama is trying to bring us all together, and that I “shouldn’t be angry” over this.

Except that my anger isn’t the cause of the divisiveness, if that’s what it is. Obama’s choice is. And I damn well should be angry!

Now, I’m not saying I don’t still support Obama, because I do. I don’t expect to agree with him 100% of the time. But, this was the wrong choice on Obama’s part, and I refuse to just pretend that I think it’s ok.

If Obama wants to bring everyone to the table so we can sing Kum Ba Yah, and all get along, that’s one thing. Obama is bringing someone to his Inauguration to play a prominent role that represents hatred and equates homosexuality with child molestation. If he were to bring a prominent anti-semitic in such a way, do you really think that anyone would be telling the Jewish Community that they are wrong to be angry, or to just get over it?

Rachel Maddow drives some of my feelings home in the above video. (via ThinkProgress)

The implication of Sen. Obama’s defense is that he is returning the favor.

[…]

But Obama is not inviting Rick warren into his church or into his campaign or something. He’s inviting him to the nation’s capital to convene the swearing in of the next president of the United States. The President-elect did not invite Warren to his home. He invited him, proverbially, to our’s, the nation’s.

[...]

When human rights activists look back decades, centuries, from now, on the first presidential innauguration of an African American, a landmark achievement won’t they be thinking ‘what a great moment’, but ‘what was that guy who compared homosexuality to incest doing there?’

Apparently, even Rick Warren’s supports are upset by this. Who is being united by this?

Via Ezra Klein, I came across Matt Yglesias’ thoughts on the subject:

A brief point to make is that it’s very easy for a person who isn’t part of the minority group that’s being symbolically dissed to dismiss someone else’s concerns as merely symbolic and not that big a deal. But it’s worth considering how much public policy acts consistently to reaffirm the symbolic commitments of majority groups.

I finally got to watch Milk last night. I cried through almost the entire movie, and I don’t do that. I kept seeing so many parallels to today. No, gays aren’t rounded up in bars and hauled off to jail anymore. We’ve made progress there. But, the Prop 6 fight (to fire all gay teachers and their supporters), which Harvey Milk fought, was so similiar to the Prop 8 fight we just went through. Except Prop 6 didn’t pass, but Prop 8 did. After watching the movie, the thought “why are we still fighting this exact same fight 30 years later?” kept going through my head.

I went to see Milk with a friend, who reminded me that I should instead be concentrating on Harvey Milk’s real message. And that is – we’re all in this together. The GLBTQ community is a minority. We won’t accomplish anything on our own. We have to have the support of our straight allies. We have to form partnerships. We have to make sure that others realize that we’re here, and then that they know we are not freaks of nature.

For anyone who thinks that gay marriage or gay rights in general, are not a big deal, that there are “other, more important issues” to focus on, I have to say that this is a big deal. You don’t understand until you are the one being discriminated against. And how could you, really? Even more, though – these rights represent something far more than they might appear to, at first. Until we are accepted as equals, and society doesn’t see us as abnormal freaks of nature, we are still going to see gays lose their jobs, lose their housing, and even killed. You don’t hear about these things through the mainstream media. That means most people don’t even know it’s happening. 8 days ago, a gay man in Washington D.C. was shot and killed. All signs point to it being because he was gay. Utah is one of 20 states that do not include sexual orientation in hate crimes statistics. So, when you read that there were 1,195 victims of a sexual orientation based hate crime in 2006, that means the number is nowhere close to reality.

I could lose my job because I’m bisexual. The only way I can even hope to get a straight person to understand that, is to tell you that you, too, could be fired, if your boss just thinks you are gay. And I bet that doesn’t even halfway drive the point home.

The GLBTQ community cannot just pretend this isn’t a big deal. I’m not saying that I think we should go impeach Obama. I’m saying this community should be standing up and telling Barack Obama that we disapprove of his choice. Our voices are just a tiny part of the population, and our country is supposed to be one where the minority is protected from having the majority trample them. But, that just won’t happen if we stay quiet.

So, if you think I’m being loud and obnoxious about this, I’m doing something right.

Rick Warren is a horrible choice to give the invocation at the Innauguation. He’s a homophobe, he is against women’s rights, and even stem cell research. This decision feels like a slap in the face to LGBTQ people across America. And Barack just made this much worse:

The worst part here was the “disagree without being disagreeable” sentence. Everything about Rick Warren is disagreeable. He is hostile toward GLBTQ Americans. He doesn’t just disagree with us. He compares homosexuality to pedophelia! 

I’ve known all along that I wasn’t always going to agree with Obama on everything, and I’ve already disagreed with a few things. But, this one really hurts in a personal way. And it was so unnecessary.

Update: I forgot to include this link. I went to Change.gov yesterday to give my opinion on Rick Warren, and I’m about to go do it again! You should too!

Update 2: Here are some more things you can do:

Sign the petition: Obama: Stand Up for Gay Americans, Say No to Rick Warren

And from the Facebook group Protest Rick Warren giving Barack Obama’s Inaugural Invocation:

1. CALL 202-540-3000 , press “2,” speak with a live person

2. SEND a letter letting the transition team know what you think here http://change.gov/page/content/contact, and

3. EMAIL Parag Mehta, Obama’s LGBT liaison on the transition team at parag.mehta@ptt.gov.

4. Contact members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies as well.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe
Sen. Harry Reid
http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Sen. Bob Bennett
http://bennett.senate.gov/contact/email_form.cfm
Rep. Nancy Pelosi
http://speaker.house.gov/contact/
Rep. Steny Hoyer
http://hoyer.house.gov/contact/email.asp
Rep. John Boehner
http://johnboehner.house.gov/Contact/

During the primary campaign, I was on a conference call with Barack Obama, and almost got the chance to ask him a question. I had been selected to ask, but because things ran late, it didn’t happen. I held on to that question for the rest of the campaign, hoping somehow I’d be able to ask. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. This was my question for Barack Obama:

What are you going to do to keep all of us on the grassroots level involved, after the campaign is over?

Well, my question has been answered. He’s asking us to Be The Change You Want. We were asked to have these events all over the country, and Robin Ballard and I are putting together one in Salt Lake City, at the old Obama HQ. The object of the meeting to plan community service events in our community. We’ll be discussing different ideas, finding people to lead the events, as well as how to promote them.

I absolutely cannot tell you how thrilled I am about this meeting, and what it means for us. Obama is proving to me that he’s exactly the person I chose to vote for. Regardless of individual policy decisions he may make, this concept of keeping us involved with politics and our community is exactly what we need. Leaving myBO up, and asking us to continue to use it, to make our communities better, and to stay in touch so that we can organize around the ideas that are important to us, is one of the best things President-Elect Obama could do right now.

So, I hope everyone will come, or organize one of these in your own area, and each of us can Be The Change You Want.

Time:
Saturday, December 13 from 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM

Location:
Former Obama HQ
780 East South Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84102

Directions:
Please park on 8TH East (or walk/ride your bike/carpool). Be a good neighbor and refrain from using other business’s parking lots.